Kate Abercrombie

In Conversation with Sarah Gamble and Sarah McEneaney

Artists Sarah Gamble, Sarah McEneaney, and Kate Abercrombie met on the opening day of Abercrombie’s new exhibition Some Lives at Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia to talk about the work in the exhibition and Abercrombie’s practice. The conversation was recorded, transcribed and edited for clarity. The exhibition is on view through January 6, 2024. 

Sarah Gamble (SG): How are you both doing?

Sarah McEneaney (SM): I’m good, how are you?

SG: How are you, Kate?

Kate Abercrombie (KA): I’m nervous and excited.

SG: It’s your opening, of course your are! I always get that way. Do you ever feel that way, Sarah M, before a show opens?

SM: No, I like having the work out there.

KA: I like it too but something about the work moving from the studio to the gallery always makes me emotional. The work takes on a new life.

SG: Each work feels like a poem that I don’t have the exact translation for, and this is part of what keeps me pulled in, interested in investigating each work.

KA: I like that because I love poetry. I think that poetry is similar to making a painting in many ways, the combining of imagery, color and mark making are similar to how poetry uses language to convey an expression or idea. Also, both poetry and painting can offer viewers multiple entry points, from emotional, aesthetic responses to interpretation, which is something I am interested in in my work.

SG: To me these paintings depict parts of your life or life in general. These elements are put together like a still life, but they mean something more. 

KA: This feels connected to the essay “Of Power and Time” by Mary Oliver that inspired the title of the exhibit. It’s about creativity and how the practice of making art is impacted by different parts of yourself. I was drawn to how she was talking about her own practice and liked the idea of having embedded parts of yourself that inform both your past and future. I also love still life painting. I feel like it is super relatable, personal, and sometimes domestic. I’m interested in having those ideas in my work.  

SM: Like you are familiar with the subject matter? 

SG: Like elements in the paintings actually exist, somewhere, in a physical way?

KA: Yes. Also, I like how an object can be transformative in the artist’s hand, but it is still something known.

SM: This is just like your paintings. And the title, Some Lives leaves it more open…many lives.

KA: Exactly, I wanted it open, because the impetus for each work comes from my own lived experience but in the work I try to explore it as an idea that is both part of myself and what it means outside of me. I did not want the work to be autobiographical. I was also thinking about this 2016 conversation between Anne Carson and Michael Silverblatt in which she poses the question “What does an answer answer?” I’m searching for answers that lead to more questions through which I can continue to understand my world and the world around me - this involves close thinking and looking. 

SG: Like you're unraveling an idea. I like thinking about how therapy doesn't always just take place with a therapist. I don’t mean to imply that your art is your therapy necessarily, but I see psychological self-analysis that potentially leads you to pick your specific symbols. 

KA: I feel like these works give me the opportunity to understand things from my personal history, from the mundane aspects of my day to day life, my upbringing, and most significantly menopause which is currently a huge change in my life. If there is therapy in my work, it is a treatment or practice of ongoing dialogue to find understanding and connections with ideas.

SG: Oh my god I am in menopause right now and I gotcha.

KA: This moment in my life has made me think about my relationship to myself, my body but also my place in the world and my future. It is an exciting marker, and this body of work was an opportunity to make highly personal work that I think also has the potential to connect with more universal themes of time.  

SG: That is very interesting to hear because again, these paintings are super psychological to me - I see a reflective psychic space depicted. But in a happy way! Not with menopausal dread. Why does menopause suggest dread inherently anyway? Fuck the Patriarchy.  

SM: To me, they are complicated and messy but very joyful! Given the overarching themes, do you work on only one at a time or multiple pieces at once?

KA: I work on many simultaneously. Other types of paint like oil or even acrylic, have natural breaks because of drying time but gouache you can just keep going. Having multiple surfaces going at the same time gives me the opportunity to take a break from a piece. The work is dense and pattern rich so breaks give me the chance to ensure the density is controlled as opposed to overworked. The breaks also promote critical thinking about the formal elements of the work and if it is conceptually doing what I envision. I begin each work with a drawing.

SM: Do you lay them out in pencil on the boards?

KA: I do drawings on tracing paper and I transfer them to the boards because I don’t want to mess up the surface of the board, I prefer how the gouache paint lays on a smooth surface. The drawings are the structure of the piece while the  process of painting is when I find surprises in the work. I get to experiment with mark making and how I layer the paint. 

SM: I love these orange plastic pieces arranged as flowers, are they plastic anchors or something else? 

KA: This piece is titled Sidewalk Volunteers, and they are actually syringe caps. They’re a prevalent aspect of our urban landscape. This piece is about my daily commute seeing flowers that self-seed on the sidewalk from a planter along with other detritus. 

SG: Is it a coping mechanism to find beauty in trash?

KA: I like trash when it feels personal and mundane. This work came straight  from my sketchbook and feels like the moment I made it. It is different from other works in the exhibit. Or maybe it’s just that this is a piece that connects with a more singular, present moment as opposed to other works that attempt to connect with elements of past, present and future.  

SG: Yes, I see some of those differences. I like how in all the paintings you are showing us how you are looking at things, recording them, and then in their display, giving us symbols or context for an inner world. Like the cards. They are a deck like any other but we know they are a stand-in for something more.

KA: The two works with cards are called Imposter #1 and Imposter #2, and are about imposter syndrome. I thought at this stage of life, I would be past feeling this way, but it’s still there, just different.

SG: You mean you just accept it now?

KA: No, I am more surprised by it, but I am okay with it, not in the moment but externally. I feel like I know myself and am confident but the imposter syndrome manifests in me from imbedded cultural expectations. 

SM: I want to hear more about the technique and the paint. Are you using true gouache?

KA: Yes, I like it because it is super pigmented.

SM: I don’t want you to give away your secrets, but I want to know what came first and what was on top of what.

KA: I tried varied approaches to the layering. For example, in Cycles, I painted layers of watercolor and gouache and then added more opaque color in the beaded area and the red area was built more slowly with thin layers.

SM: Some things are defined with an edge and other things are just bands of color next to each other that are so beautifully done, subtle changes and more poppy.

SG: So well rendered without feeling like illustration.

SG/SM: Or Fussy. (Both SG and SM make the same statement at the same time) 

SG: What is this one? Are these chakras?  (SG is referencing the piece, Three years wander)

KA: No, organs. It’s based on medieval anatomy drawings and the large flowers are passion flowers.

SM: And what about these, are they roses, just more stylized?

KA: Yes, there are differently depicted/stylized roses in all the paintings. I was thinking of the works both as part of a whole and as individuals. The roses are designed as a visual link for the viewer to connect the work.

SM: Something unifying.

KA: Yes, and I also like that they are associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and fertility. 

SG: Right, all very female feeling. 

KA: This painting we’ve been talking about is titled Three years wander. It and Wandering womb are about the antiquated idea of the wandering womb.

SG: I don’t know what it is.

SM: It is just one of the myths put on women, mostly negative about women’s health

KA: I’ve thought a lot about it because it was more commonly associated with women who never married or had children and anxiety. These false ideas about women's health, sexuality, and roles in society persist but my impetus for making this work is not to just depict a historical idea but rather, I’m concerned with how the idea exists in the present. 

SG: You talked about Sidewalk Volunteers feeling like a work in the show that has a different intent. Are there other works that you feel explore the same themes but in a different way - like it’s stretching into something different? 

KA: I think Facades for Luisa Casati is, it has a different type of compositional space. To me it feels like an object, and while the themes are connected, it is about something outside of myself  because it directly references someone else. I wanted to make a work about outward presentation through style, which can be an art and aspirational, but can also be a wall and/or fragile. I thought about fashion icons when developing the work. Luisa Cassati resonated with me because of her biography. She was both a muse to many artists of her day, as well as an inspiration to many contemporary fashion designers, musicians, writers, and artists. I think the Shakespeare quote “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety” on her gravestone is an apt description. 

SM: As you build the paintings, are you working all over all the time or are you working on a small area and then moving to another area?

KA: Especially in the beginning stages of a new artwork I try to lay down some larger areas of color to establish the pallet. I then work in multiple areas across the artwork at once, so I do not overwork a section to allow for detailed rendering vs flat patterning as well as something in between. Working all over helps me with decision making about color and types of rendering to build a space where disparate objects and patterns can coexist or have a dialog.

SM: How did you land on this pattern in Facades for Luisa Casati?

KA: I wanted something that was crackly but in a fake way. I had done a piece before that had a very similar pattern, so that was in my head, but I didn’t know if it would work. At first it wasn’t working at all, so I put in the light purple. Color can change everything! 

SG: I think that light purple totally makes it.

SM: Oh, and I love the candle. Everything is so individual but works together so well.

SG: In Morphing ideals, I really appreciate the rendering of the tape measure, being highly rendered within a space that isn’t easily definable. Your balance of flatness and rendering in a 3d kind way makes a great in-between of space. I think this is part of how I read these as mostly internal spaces - the formal qualities inform my understanding of content. 

SM: Like you were saying, Sarah, to me, this work contains different threads -  literal and figurative. This spool of thread, the yarn, the background stitching, even the tape measure.

SG: Some of them operate as an investigation into an idea and others operate more as a story. True like a lake and lie like the moon and Wandering Womb explain this mysterious thing that I can’t quite visualize so you are helping me find it. Others, you are directly giving it to me or showing it to me like in Imposter #1 and Imposter #2. I like how they talk to each other because it sometimes informs how you feel about others. It makes for a cohesive body of work without sacrificing the individuality of each work. 

KA: I think I need that for my practice - using different approaches to image making to understand an idea.

SM: And as a viewer, you can figure it out or make what you will with the elements you connect to.

KA: I hope that viewers can have this exact relationship you’ve described to the work - an interest in investigating my imagery to find connection or understanding. One aspect that is the same in all work and something I use that viewers can employ to further direct their investigation is the title. I often use them to give viewers insight to the meaning or conceptual underpinning of the work. I am so excited to share this work with viewers and really appreciate the time spent with you two today at the show.

Kate Abercrombie: Some Lives is on view at Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia from November 16, 2023 - January 6, 2024. Also, on view at the gallery during this window is the exhibition Olivia Jia: Nine Motifs. From the gallery’s website, Jia’s exhibit is comprised of “trompe-l’oeil oil paintings that conjure a re-discovered lost archive of images including a garden window in Suzhou and an Audubon illustration from The Birds of America relating to the artist’s cultural background as the child of Chinese immigrants.”

Kate Abercrombie has an MFA from University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. She has been included in exhibitions in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Vox Populi, Fleisher/Ollman, Little Berlin, and Black Floor. She has also shown at the Creative Research Laboratory, Austin, TX. In 2005, she received an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. In 2009, she was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. Her work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Fabric Workshop and Museum. 

Sarah Gamble lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is represented by Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. She received a MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Pew Fellow. Artist residencies include MacDowell, Millay Arts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Roswell Artist in Residence Program, Hudson House, UCross Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center with as full fellowship. She has had solo and two person exhibitions at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, Edward Thorp Gallery in New York City,  Adams and Ollman Gallery in Portland and Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta. 

Sarah McEneaney (b. 1955, Munich, Germany) is a Philadelphia-based artist and community activist, who is well known for creating intricately detailed and intimately autobiographical works. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia in 1979. Her solo exhibitions have included Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; the Institute of Contemporary Art and Locks Gallery, both Philadelphia; Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York and the List Gallery, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. McEneaney is the recipient of a number of grants including a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, an Anonymous Was A Woman Grant , a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, an Independence Foundation Fellowship, and a grant from The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has been an artist in residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Center, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland; The Brodsky Center at PAFA Philadelphia; Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo, Ireland; The Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans; Chianti Foundation Marfa, TX,; Yaddo ,Saratoga Springs, NY; and the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, among others. McEneaney’s work is in the permanent collections of many museums including, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA;; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Sarah McEneaney is represented by Locks Gallery, Philadelphia and Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York.